[Tee tiong huat]

Kyiv/Ukraine said it was responsible for the assassination of a Russia-backed official with a car bomb in the occupied eastern city of Luhansk on Wednesday.

Mikhail Filiponenko, a lawmaker in the Kremlin-installed assembly, was a former head of the army of the so-called Luhansk People’s Republic (LPR). He had been active in the region’s pro-Russian separatist movement since 2014.
https://www.cnn.com/2023/11/08/europe/uk...index.html

Filiponenko Mikhail Yuryevich was eliminated.”
Filiponenko had been “involved in organization of torture chambers in occupied territories of Luhansk region, where prisoners of war and civilian hostages were subjected to inhuman torture,” according to the Defense Intelligence.
Filiponenko personally brutally tortured people.
Filiponenko had been killed in a car bombing early Wednesday morning. Ukraine’s military intelligence service immediately claimed responsibility and warned others serving “terrorist Russia” would receive “retribution.”

IMAGE was DIRECTLY PROVIDED by 3rd PARTY & HAS NOT BEEN VETTED for EDITORIAL ACCURACY by AP EDITORIAL TEAM. CONFLICT IN UKRAINE. AP also connot independently verify, the Date, Location Or Conitions under which it Shot. 

08.11.2023 A view shows the scene of a car bomb explosion which killed Mikhail Filiponenko, a member of the People's Council of the 

Luhansk People's Republic and former chief of the LPR People's Militia, in Luhansk, Luhansk People's Republic, Russia. Stanislav Krasilnikov / Sputnik via AP

There growing evidence of Russia’s widespread use of torture against Ukrainians in territories it has occupied. A report in August found nearly half of Ukrainians held in Russian detention centers in Kherson were subject to widespread torture including sexual violence. Separately, Ukrainian prosecutors in September opened more than 3,000 criminal cases over Russia’s alleged crimes against children in the country, including torture.

Ukraine’s Defense Intelligence posted Filiponenko’s address and warned others: “All addresses of traitors and places of their service to terrorist Russia in the temporarily occupied territories of Ukraine are known! Defense Intelligence of Ukraine states that all war criminals and collaborators will receive a fair retribution!”

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen shakes hands with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, following their press-conference in Kyiv on May 9. Ukraine is ready to start process of joining European Union, Commission says there have been several assassination attempts against Russian-backed officials in occupied Ukraine. The acting interior minister of the self-declared LPR, Igor Kornet, was “severely” wounded in an explosion in May.

Luhansk is one of the four regions that Russia unilaterally annexed in September last year, along with Donetsk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia. Luhansk and Donetsk are home to two Russian-backed breakaway republics where fighting has been ongoing since 2014. Kherson and Zaporizhzhia, in the south of Ukraine, have been occupied by Russian forces since shortly after the full-scale invasion began in 2022.

Moscow staged sham elections in all four regions in Sept, in an attempt to enforce Russian legitimacy in Ukraine it holds. “The election results are already well known,” a resident of Zaporizhzhia which predictably delivered landslide victories for President Putin’s United Russia party.
https://www.cnn.com/2023/11/08/europe/uk...index.html